Red Balloons
In January 2020, Liam Walsh's 15-year old son Patrick went to a football game with his brother and never came home. Here, he tells us about the book he wrote as a result.
In January 2020, my 15-year old son Patrick went to a football game and never came home.
A Swindon Town fan, he’d gone to watch Tottenham, because he could. He collapsed seeking the last train out of Marylebone and died, suddenly, unexpectedly and still, without cause.
Two weeks later, my dad, suffering with cancer and with his sense of purpose desperately unravelled, gently died too.
Eventually, I wrote a book, and its evolution was unexpected and a little unconventional. I wrote, amid an utterly bereft grief and after a couple of years, ‘Red Balloons – A Father, A Son, A Memoir’ took tentative flight, and gently spread its wings. It was a beautiful journey and only now am I able to look back and reflect on why and maybe how I wrote it.
It began with a startling jolt. I remember exactly where I was. Driving on the edge of the Cotswolds with honey limestone walls to one side, the beautiful winter green sweep of the Windrush valley in the shallow late afternoon sun to the other. An energy fizzed through me, compelling me to write our story.
First, there was an article, and soon there was a picture of Patrick and Dad and I, wearing novelty hats on the front page of the ‘Swindon Advertiser’. A few weeks later the article had featured in ‘When Saturday Comes’ and ‘The Guardian’, and maybe that should have sufficed. But the response was overwhelming, and such was the catharsis and release that its writing had given me, I wrote more. Unconnected and unstructured, but I had to preserve everything so vividly. The sheer despair of losing them as much as the magic of loving them. Our stories.
I had a best friend writing an actual book. He would message to tell me he had 23,000 words and just needed another 50,000 or so. So I collected everything I had ever written, and pasted it into a single document. 18,000. A seed had been planted.
He got to 35,000 and we debated whether matter-of-fact should count as three words or one. I read a book on how to write a book which was fabulous advice but confirmed that I didn’t know how to write a book. But I was catching up.
Sometimes I’d write nothing for months on end and sometimes the wind would catch me, and I’d gasp at how much time had disappeared and the remarkably growing word count. Loose thoughts of structure and clarity of purpose developed. I was doing this.
I had a private, thrilling moment when printing out the first version of my manuscript, 70-odd thousand of my words to take away on a seaside break. Maybe a few days of salty air and late nights and I’d be nearly there. Six months later I was still re-wording, scrawling notes, agonising over edits when I approached a few agents and publishers. I wasn’t sure if the fledgling Red Balloons should sit on a grief, general sport, football or even Irish-interest shelf in the imaginary bookshop in my head, so I hedged my bets across them. Within six more months and with thanks to the wonderful Halcyon Publishing, I was signing copies, being interviewed and counting blessings. It had been a whirlwind.
My primary reason had always been that selfish one: to preserve Patrick and Dad though our stories. The stirring revelation for me is how others have found those stories so relatable – whether dealing with grief, remembering the family trips to football, cherishing shared traditions or being captivated by ginger cats.
Dad always used to say everyone had a book in them. I know he’d be very proud, even of the silly hat picture.